


honest eyes

by orphan_account



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, lj comment fic, ~angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/705904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a beat and Jade realizes that maybe Kaldur'ahm isn't all good. There's something in his mannerisms that makes her think he's had some of that beat out of him by now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	honest eyes

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on livejournal and whatever i ship these two a lot in the whole 'never destined to be happy way', stop judging me.

Roy's boring. Well maybe he isn't, maybe it's her. But either way, she leaves and is on her own. Jade likes it that way because it's simple and quiet and sometimes when she's jumping from building to building she feels a little like she's flying and there's no one to tell her otherwise. She's in Indonesia when she bumps into a sad and familiar boy (he'll always be a boy to her somewhat, he's Artemis's in a way, like the rest) and smirks and pulls up a barstool next to him. It's Aqualad, the one who Roy loved like a brother. She remembers him better than most of the others.  
  
(He remembers her too - her swords and grins and attitude.)  
  
"Why the long face?" She asks when he sighs at her arrival. He doesn't respond for a moment, just stares at the wooden bar and Jade's unsure if he's mentally disturbed or ignoring her.  
  
"I tire of feelings," he says after a long moment. Jade blinks. It's a confession, maybe out of habit (can he even lie?) more than anything, and he looks at her now like he expects something from her as well. She doesn't do that, doesn't give any of her to anyone. Jade spent the first seventeen years of her life having parts of herself taken from her and the years since have been blotted with her losing them. So what she has left she hoards, keeps so close to her vest that no one can even see that there's anything left.  
  
"So stop having them," she responds after a long pause. His mouth quirks up mildly and he chuckles bitterly. There's a beat and Jade realizes that maybe he isn't all good. There's something in his mannerisms that makes her think he's had some of that beat out of him by now. It's what prompts her to move forward, what propels her lips to his. He leans into her and there's a hand in her hair suddenly and it's all free of anything but motion. As they stumble to someone's hotel room, she hears him mumble another girl's name and pulls away.  
  
"You fuck me, you fuck  _me_. Don't pretend I'm someone else," she snarls, her fist still clutching his shirt. He nods, apologizes even and she grins as she lets him pull her back.  
  
(In the morning she doesn't wake up and feel a pang when she finds a lack of red hair sprawled across the bed next to her. He does.)  
  
It becomes a pattern. They follow each other somehow, across the globe and cities with names that have too many vowels. She pretends he's a redhead and he pretends he isn't pretending the same. But somehow, they're in Michegan or Minnesota and it's post-everything and she's examining the hotel safe, her hair tied up lopsidedly and her lip between her teeth as she concentrates and all he can think is  _shit_.  
  
(She thinks  _shit_  sometimes, mostly when her period is a week late and when Roy shows up on a heist and she has to physically keep herself from touching his arm like she used to when he got upset - because she isn't that girl.)  
  
Things get bad when Dick asks him to go undercover and he tells her that he's thinking of joining "her side". She walks out of the hotel in her skivvies and he sits on the bed wondering what he said. She's on the roof when he finds her.  
  
"I don't have a side," she says, her eyes on the horizon. "I just have me."  
  
"You have me too," he admits and he feels much like Wally, with his stupid words that spill out of his mouth to girls who are afraid to hear them. Jade turns to him and smiles, but it's not her usual smirk (the one where her eyes flash and her cheeks redden slightly with glee) there's something sad in it. Because she knows he means it because he's honest - probably couldn't lie to save his life.  
  
"I don't want you," she answers.  
  
(She finds him afterwards, when he's not Aqualad anymore. They pass in a hallway and she's got a black band on her ankle for a sister she didn't know how to love and he's looks at her with his hand on the new girl's elbow. He stops to get her attention and she sees it.  
  
Sees that maybe he can lie.  
Just not to her.)


End file.
